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Egg Cutlets

Egg cutlets made from boiled eggs, flour, milk, cream, parsley, onion juice, coated in egg and cracker crumbs, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Egg Cutlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Add the flour and stir until combined.

  3. Gradually add the milk and cream, cooking until thick.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Stir in the chopped eggs, parsley, and onion juice.

  2. Mold the mixture into cutlets.

  3. Roll each cutlet in egg and then in cracker crumbs.

  4. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  5. Serve with mushroom sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boiled eggs
Provide the main body and flavor of the cutlet filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so it holds its shape.
Milk and cream
Form the thick white sauce that binds the chopped eggs together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and starts the flour-based sauce.
Egg for coating
Helps the cracker crumbs stick to the outside of each cutlet.

The step that matters

Let the sauce cool before shaping. A warm, loose sauce will not hold its shape when molded and may slump or break apart in the hot lard. Cooling lets the starch set so the cutlets keep their form while frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, milk, cream, parsley):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, milk, cream, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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